I’m a sucker for classic monster movies. I recently binged my way through all 30 films in the classic Universal Monsters collection. And when I ran out of Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man, Invisible Man, Mummy, and Creature films, I found myself desperately looking for more.

Enter Shout! Factory’s horror label, Scream Factory, and its Universal Horror Collection sets.

As I said in my review of Volume 5, I’d somehow missed the first four installments in the series, but there’s no time like the present to dive in and enjoy the schlocky, spooky fun of these long-forgotten horror “classics.”

The first five volumes include a total of 20 films from the 1930s and 40s. And thankfully, Scream Factory is showing no sign of slowing down as they continue to mine Universal’s 90-some-year back catalog with Volume 6 (out on August 25).

With Volume 6, we leave the 40s behind and march proudly into the 50s with four films that don’t immediately share any similarities or connections: The Black Castle (1952), Cult of the Cobra (1955), The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958), and The Shadow of the Cat (1961).

The Black Castle – starring both Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, Jr., in supporting roles – is probably the most remarkable film in this set… even if it’s not the best. Hoping to instill some spooks, Universal premiered the film on Halloween night 1952. The Black Castle is set in a nebulous 19th century Austria (when the scramble to colonize Africa was still underway). If you’re a fan of Gothic horror, this one has your number.

The other three films are solid B-film entries in Universal’s catalog that – somewhat surprisingly – break from the established tropes and formulas of their insanely popular marquee characters. These aren’t “Frankenstein stories” or “Wolf Man stores”; rather, in some respects, they’re actually precursors to 80s slasher films.

All three are about an evil that’s intent on revenge, and all three end up with a significant body count (though there’s absolutely no blood of violence on screen in any of them).

Cult of the Cobra is set at the end of World War II and features a positively awful group of Air Force officers who disrupt a religious ceremony in India and are then hunted down and killed by a woman who can transform herself into a snake. Be warned that it’s fairly racist and includes some actors in blackface as Indians.

The Thing That Couldn’t Die is probably the film I enjoyed the most in this set (and was on a classic episode of MST3K). It’s set on a remote ranch where they discover a buried chest, and the titular “thing” is actually a several-hundred-years-old disembodied head that can hypnotize people and make them do its bidding. (The movie also reuses – to great effect – the three-note jump scare music from Creature from the Black Lagoon, which had come out four years before)

Finally, The Shadow of the Cat is the set’s lone entry from the 60s and about a cat set on avenging the murder of its owner. The body count attributed to the cat is about equal to that of the other three films combined. But fair warning – the movie is basically 80 minutes of various people trying to kill a cat.

The Universal Horror Collection continues to be fun as heck if you’re a fan of old-school horror or B-movie cheese; just temper your expectations. They’re hardly anyone’s definition of high-quality cinema.

All four films were treated to new 2K scans from fine grain film elements, and each has DTS mono audio. The set also has quite a few special features (certainly more than Volume 5 had). Each film includes a feature-length audio commentary with film historians and TV spots and/or trailers. There are also a couple featurettes:

• Universal Horror Strikes Back!: a 16-minute look at Universal Horror in the 40s
• In the Shadow of Shelley: a 25-minute retrospective interview with actor Barbara Shelley

The Universal Horror Collection, Volume 6 is available now (and check here for the first five sets).